<About 200 texts. Content to be developed.> H. M. Chadwick's scheme to produce new editions, with translation and commentary, of all surviving charters in the vernacular is represented by three volumes, all published by the Cambridge University Press: Select English Historical Documents of the Ninth and Tenth Centuries, ed. F. E. Harmer (Cambridge, 1914); Anglo-Saxon Wills, ed. Dorothy Whitelock (Cambridge, 1930); and Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. A. J. Robertson (Cambridge, 1939; 2nd ed., 1956). These three were complemented by Anglo-Saxon Writs, ed. F. E. Harmer (Manchester, 1952; reprinted with addendum, Stamford, 1989).
The three volumes published by the Cambridge University Press are available in paperback reprint (Cambridge, 2011), each with introductory remarks by SDK and a concordance enabling the user to move direct from the book to the entries for each charter in the 'Electronic Sawyer', with references to more recent work on the texts; see the flyer (.pdf file), or visit the CUP website.
Classification of Anglo-Saxon charters in the vernacular
- 'Royal' charters, only one or two of which are likely to be authentic in this form, and otherwise comprising documents which are probably vernacular versions of Latin texts, or texts fabricated de novo in the vernacular <25>
- Royal writs (ed. Florence Harmer)
- 'Private' charters, including records of grants, purchases, and exchanges <45>
- 'Private' charters, in the form of leases of land by religious houses to those who lived around them; including the leases issued by successive bishops of Worcester <35>
- Written records of the oral declarations by which men and women of substance announced their intentions for the disposal of lands and possessions after their death, known to modern scholarship as 'wills' (significant for having been put into written form, but not to be confused with modern wills) <50, plus some known only from Latin translations or abstracts of lost vernacular texts>
- Records of one kind or another, generated by processes of litigation, whether at royal assemblies or at local assemblies; including, for example, the 'Fonthill Letter' <20>
- Miscellaneous texts <30>
Further reading
- Simon Keynes, 'Anglo-Saxon charters in the vernacular', A. J. Robertson Memorial Lecture in Anglo-Saxon Studies 2009 (Aberdeen, forthcoming)
- K. Lowe, <to be added>
- Susan D. Thompson, Anglo-Saxon Vernacular Documents: a Palaeography, Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies, Occasional Publications 1 (Manchester, 2010)
- Linda Tollerton, Wills and Will-making in Anglo-Saxon England (York, 2011)
Page maintained by SDK
October 2011